The Library’s new vision statement and strategic directions express the passionate desires of our librarians and staff to provide OU students, faculty, and staff with the best that a 21st century academic library has to offer. Major goals relate to the provision of information resources that are highly relevant to OU’s curricula and research endeavors, outstanding online and physical learning environments, exemplary information literacy instruction, and compelling cultural events and exhibits – all intended to foster the academic success of OU students, promote lifelong learning, and advance research throughout the University community.
We hope that, even in this age of intense information competition, our OU constituents will turn to us first to find the personalized guidance and high-quality resources they need to make meaningful connections with each other and the world. This is why, among our many initiatives, we have begun to collaborate with other academic libraries throughout Michigan to manage and share our collections even more efficiently. We have started to transform the entire second floor of Kresge Library into a “Learning Commons,” a concept that will improve our spaces by integrating research services and technological assistance, and expanding our computing resources for students. Our Library Website is undergoing a complete redesign to improve usability and will be released during the 2013-2014 academic year. And we continue to expand our instruction program by embedding library resources into OU’s online programs, and offering a signature, for-credit course, “Library Research in the Information Age.” The popularity of this course has been so great that we have added a second section for the Winter 2013 semester.
Throughout this year and beyond, we want to make sure that we are serving as effective partners in OU’s student success, teaching, research, and community engagement initiatives. We are committed to learning more about our users’ library and information needs, so we’ve asked students, faculty, and staff to participate in focus group sessions, usability studies, and our first comprehensive LibQUAL+™ survey (see article in this newsletter). We also appreciate the Libraries’ generous friends and donors who help us transform lives through the discovery and creation of knowledge, learning, and research. There are many opportunities to support OU and its Libraries, and I invite you to contact us so that we can get to know you better and so that you can get to know the Library more as it evolves to meet the needs of 21st century scholars and students. Thank you for your support of the OU Libraries!
Dr. Adriene Lim
Dean, University Libraries
